Edward Jones opens building, plans to add 250 jobs
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/06/2009
By Tim Bryant
MARYLAND HEIGHTS -- As Edward Jones executives celebrated the newest building on the company's campus here, the company also announced plans to create about 250 new jobs to help fill the nine-story structure.
About half of the 372,300-square-foot building opened Monday will be used to train new brokers. The rest will provide office space for the company. It's the second building on the Maryland Heights campus, part of a $245 million expansion that will be completed in multiple phases.
"We don't consider training an expense," Jim Weddle, Edward Jones' managing partner, said of the company's newest facility. "As we've said many times, we consider it an investment."
When Edward Jones announced plans for the campus in 2006, executives promised new jobs would follow. So far, the company has added about 500 jobs as part of the expansion. The 250 jobs announced Monday will be based in either Maryland Heights or Des Peres.
Overall, the brokerage employs more than 4,500 throughout the area.
About 200 Edward Jones partners attended the dedication Monday in the new building. The company hopes to have a similar celebration in January, when a $100 million expansion at the headquarters in Des Peres is expected to be completed.
As for Maryland Heights, the company isn't through building. Plans for a third structure will get under way after Edward Jones completes the headquarters expansion in Des Peres, said Jodi Foltz Gay, the company's senior partner for facilities.
Weddle said the Maryland Heights campus has room for five more buildings, but he didn't offer a timetable for when they might be pursued.
For St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, the expansion plans are all about jobs.
"Keep building," he said at the dedication. "Keep providing quality jobs for this metropolitan area."
Mayor Mike Moeller praised the "striking new addition" that he said marks a new high on "the Maryland Heights skyline."
South on Interstate 270 at Manchester Road, work continues on the company's headquarters expansion. A compromise reached in 2007 produced an agreement for a scaled-down project to answer concerns by Des Peres officials about the density of the project and traffic congestion in the area.
The St. Louis County Council has granted Edward Jones property and sales tax abatements totaling about $37 million. The abatements will continue until 2022 to help finance construction of the Maryland Heights expansion along Progress Parkway just east of Interstate 270. Parking garages are part of the plan.
